Chapter 119

[ 1,426 words ]

It’s been poisoned

119: 119.

It’s been poisoned Theo

“Give me room to work,” Kiara knocks Sigrid aside with her hip, taking the male’s position over Ransom.

“We managed to dig out the bullet and wrap the bleeding, but we think it might have gotten infected,” I say.

Ransom looks deathly pale.

Kiara cuts off the bandage, carefully inspecting the mottled skin and discoloration.

“Shit. I think there are still some pieces inside,” she said, almost to herself.

“Aww fuck,” Ransom groaned.

“Don’t tell me I’m going to lose a leg.”

“No, you’re not going to lose it, but it’s not going to feel good while I get the pieces out,” she tells him.

“At least the view will be nice.” He gives Kiara an appraising look.

The sound of footsteps comes from behind.

Ransom looks over my shoulder and mutters, “And there goes the view.”

“Is the bastard dead?” Elliot’s voice is a mixture of fury and worry.

“He is,” Sigrid answers.

“Fucking Duane,” Hazel hisses, moving to Ransom’s other side.

Elliot rounds Ransom’s bed, taking Sigrid’s place.

Barric, Kade, and Ronan come to stand beside me.

“Don’t worry, my princess, the healers will make you well,” Elliot says.

Ransom frowns at Elliot.

“I’m fine.”

“What happened?” Ronan says.

“Oh, no. Not here,” Kiara glares at Ronan.

“You want to do your thing, fine but it happens outside my infirmary.”

Ronan holds up his hands.

“Let’s go review in the counsel room.”

I look back at Ransom, feeling a strange kinship with the male.

“You good here.”

“Sure, if you take him,” he jerks a thumb at Elliot.

“With you.”

“Not happening. I’ll stay with you while you heal, and you can fill me in after.” Elliot pulls up a chair and takes a seat to make his point.

Hazel takes the seat next to Elliot.

“I’m not moving my ass.”

Well, I guess that is that.

The closeness of my band soothes my wolf.

I step closer to them, and Aria comes up scanning me over.

“How was it?” She asks softly, rubbing a hand on my chest.

“We got everything we needed, even with our scuffle.”

I fill them in on what happened, letting them know the Hunters were waiting to take Ransom back, but they didn’t seem to know about the formulas.

“What about the other Alphas?

Has everyone returned?

I ask.

“We’re just waiting for the Waningoon pack,” Barric says.

“Mmm, alright, well I’m going to go take a shower.”

“I’ll make you a plate of food and bring it to the room,” Aria says before heading down the hall.

Ronan and Barric head back into the infirmary while I head to the bathing pools.

My wolf lets out a relieved sigh.

For a while there, I didn’t think we’d make it back in time, and I really didn’t want to be the one to explain to Elliot why his princess didn’t make it.

***

Ransom’s infection had healed but it left his body drained.

He slept for eighteen hours straight, and Elliot stood with him for fourteen of them before Hazel and Sigrid convinced him to eat and get some rest.

Ronan and the other Alphas decided that it would be best to continue training the warriors to fight together while we have some of our builders help to design the forge.

The Wants ng moon pack made it to use safely, and over the next few days, we have been settling into new roles, working together to make the mountain both livable and sustainable for the foreseeable future.

My wolf longs for our territory, but he understands that this is what’s best for the moment and that we can’t count on anything ending soon.

Plan for the worst, he mutters.

We always do, I say.

I tighten the straps of my rucksack, making sure it is stable.

The morning air bites at my skin as I move through the forest with Sebastian, Marcus, Dex, and two other wolves named Juno and Edwin.

We’re one of the two hunting parties sent out this week to help keep our stores stocked.

Fallen leaves crunch beneath our boots, and the scent of pine and damp earth fills my lungs.

We left at dawn and have been hunting tracks for the past two hours.

Strangely, the elk seem to be moving further out towards the cities.

My wolf paces inside me.

He feels the tension in the trees, the strange, unnatural wrongness that scrapes against my elemental mind.

Normally, we’d have spotted fresh deer tracks by now.

Maybe even caught the scent of elk moving through the northern ridges.

Instead, the tracks have gone cold, and the forest feels abandoned.

Kade meets my eyes, and I can see the question in his mind.

“Do you get the feeling they are running from something?”

“Looks that way,” I crouch beside a patch of disturbed soil and run my fingers through a hoofprint.

Fresh.

“Southbound,” Marcus says from behind me.

“They’re moving towards the forest line.”

“It makes no sense. They’re going to head straight into the road, and after that there are only towns with small national parks in between,” The older hunter, Edwin, points toward a narrow game trail.

“That’s the third set we’ve found heading south,” Juno says.

“It’s becoming a pattern.”

My stomach tightens.

Two days ago, another hunting team reported the same thing.

Animals don’t simply abandon established feeding grounds without reason.

It’s also odd that instead of going deeper into the forest, then moving further out.

What do the animals see that we don’t?

“Maybe a predator moved into the area,” Ethan suggests.

Marcus shakes his head.

“There is no predator big enough to push everything out.”

My wolf growls softly, agitated at this new discovery.

If the game is moving further, it means it will take hunting parties longer to hunt and bring back game.

It reduces the amount I can get before the frost comes and makes animals scarce.

I rise to my feet.

“We need to figure out what’s happening.

I say we follow them until we have an answer.”

“Better to know than to guess,” Edwin says.

No one argues.

It would be hard to know how many lives depend on our system to work.

The further we move through the forest, the stranger things become.

Birds are scarce.

Squirrels dart through the branches less frequently than they should.

Even the usual sounds of the forest seem muted.

An uneasy silence settles over the group.

All of us scan and check for signs of life and reasons for the lessening of it.

After another hour, we reach the river, and the smell stops me in my tracks.

Instead of the light metal smell I’m used to, there is a pungent sulfuric acid with undertones of rancid gamy meat.

The smell is overwhelming.

Rot.

Decay.

Chemicals.

My wolf slams against the inside of my mind, growling at the foul order and urging me to back away from it.

Away from death.

“What the hell?” Edwin mutters.

The river is stained with a sickly gray-green tint.

Hundreds of dead fish and frogs float near the banks.

Marcus kneels near the edge.

“It’s been poisoned.”

“Careful. Don’t touch the water,” I warn.

I crouch beside the shoreline and study one of the fish.

Its scales are discolored, the eyes are cloudy, and a thin film coats its body.

This explains it.

Without the water source, the herd must have moved on, looking for another and going downstream, further into the forest, where the poison would likely flow wouldn’t be an option.

My wolf snarls.

This was intentional.

I slowly stand.

“The river feeds half our territory. For the toxins to get this far, it must have been in the water for some time, which means the fish aren’t the only problem. Every animal that drinks from this water is at risk. Every predator that feeds on those animals,” Sebastian says.

He doesn’t have to say the rest as the grim look reflects on each of the warriors’ faces.

Our stores are at risk.

We could have contaminated meat in our mountain, feeding our packs, our families.

“It’s the assembly, who else would stop it from trying to weaken our numbers before a true fight begins?” says Marcus.

Shit.

He’s right

Kade curses.

“We have to get back to the mountains to warn them.”

“We should collect samples to bring back first,” says Juno.

“We can’t fight what we haven’t identified.

My sister Yara is a scientist; she could help.”

“Good idea,” I say.

“Everyone empty a water bottle and take some of the water, the solid, and any mineral you can find near the plants or animals by the river. There we have the better,” Juno says.

We are all set to work, doing our best to get a variety of things.

But I know time is not on our side.

The longer we take here, the higher the risk of someone getting infected.

As we work, my thoughts race.

The Assembly would need time to do something on this scale.

Time and access.

Neither should have been possible.

Our warriors monitor this territory constantly.

The border guards rotate every few hours.

Scouts sweep the forests daily.

So how did they get here?

My wolf growls.

The answer opens the door to a whole other shit storm.

Someone helped them.

We have a traitor in our midst.

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